I've borrowed a friend's Sony DCR-TRV11 camcorder. My objective is to take video on the camera and move it to the computer. He said it was a digital video recorder; it seems his statement was inaccurate... it can take digital photos, but the video is stored on a mini DV tape. I installed the software that came with it (PictureGear 4.1 Lite), but that will only see the photos on the memory card, which I don't care about. The only hookup to the PC is through the serial connection. It also has A/V and S-Video, but I don't think that will help me. Any ideas? Thanks, Marshall

DV stands for digital video. The recorder is a digital format. The most common one, I beleive. WinXP should be able to handle the files, once you get them on the harddrive. Most digital camcorders use Firewire or USB connections. If those aren't available on the camera you may need to buy some hardware to connect the camera to your computer. That camera came with i.LINKŪ DV interface (IEEE 1394). This is wireless firewire. Your friend may have the wireless interface for this but I beleive you may still need firewire on your computer. Don't know much about this particular feature from Sony. Maybe a camera or electronics store can hook you up.

Yeah, after posting this thread and reading the manual extensively, I finally realized that i.Link is just another name for Firewire or IEEE 1394. If they had simply CALLED it one of those, I wouldn't have spent several hours last night trying to fiddle with it. My system is equipped with 2 6-pin Firewire ports and one more 4-pin port. I've never actually used them before, but I presume there's no difference between them? I just need to find something that goes from the camcorder (which is 4-pin) to the computer (which has both types), right? If you ask me, they spent too much effort making this complicated.

That is Sony and their propietory hardware. If memory serve me correctly, the receiver was an infrared receiver that connected to the computer. How it connected, I don't know. If you freind purchased that optional item with his camera, you can figure it out. Otherwise, you need to find a way to go from the S-Vieo output on the camera to an input on your computer. Depending on what graphics card you have, this may, or may not, be possible. If you have someone that has a video card with S-video input and a burner, maybe you can put the files on CDR or DVD.

Hmm, I'll have to talk to my friend about it. He's not that computer literate, so it's tough getting any info out of him. I have a GF4 Ti4200 video card. It has S-Video out, but I'm guessing that won't double as S-Video in, right? Or will it? Once again, it's not something I've used before.

I think cards that do video capture will have S-video in. Like the ATI AIW series.